Results 81–100 of 2673 for speaker:Roberta Blackman-Woods

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for securing this incredibly important debate. I also thank him for the work he has done in the House and elsewhere in putting Yemen squarely on our agenda, and I pay a similar tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) for all the work he has done and the inquiry that he is shortly to...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is totally unfair that these women are not paid their pension when they have a full contribution record, and that instead they are being made to work beyond a time when they are able or are forced to rely on insecure benefits that are too low?

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to her new role. I heard what she just said, but on Sunday it emerged that the UK had been providing military assistance to Saudi Arabia to carry out military training as part of Operation Crossways. With the Foreign Secretary hosting Foreign Ministers from the region yesterday for talks, does the Secretary of State think that the UK’s military support...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I want to start by thanking Members from all parties for their powerful and moving contributions this afternoon. Those of us who visited the camps made a commitment to the Rohingya people that we would not just walk away from what we had seen, and that when we came back we would raise the situation that they face and ask for two things: that the humanitarian aid would continue and be stepped...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I beg to move, That this House has considered the Rohingya crisis. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I visited the Kutupalong refugee camp earlier this month, as part of a cross-party delegation to Bangladesh organised by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I thank both organisations for organising that...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: The hon. Gentleman makes a really relevant point, which I will come to later. The school that we visited was doing a valiant job of teaching children in shifts, but that is really a drop in the ocean. Much more education and schools are needed in the camps.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: My hon. Friend makes a really good point. I was coming to the lack of citizenship that underpins most of the problems that the Rohingya people face. They have suffered persecution in Myanmar for decades. The 1982 citizenship law denies them citizenship. They are deprived of the right to vote and unable to access higher education or travel freely. Their lack of official citizenship, which is...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. I will ask the Minister how we can apply international pressure, particularly on the military in Myanmar, to ensure that that is achieved. The horrific violence over the summer in Rakhine state, in which more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed by the Burmese security forces and other militia groups, was described by the UN as “a...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I absolutely agree. Human Rights Watch has provided evidence of at least 288 villages in northern Rakhine state being partly or completely burned since 25 August. The International Rescue Committee described the deal as “at best, premature,” noting that Rohingya refugees are still fleeing Rakhine state and arriving in Bangladesh. The IRC describes ongoing violent clearance of villages...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I will come to in a minute. UK aid has provided safe drinking water and latrines to 138,000 people. It has also provided counselling and psychological support for over 10,000 women suffering from the traumas of war and sexual violence. I witnessed that service myself in the transit camps, where newly arrived refugees, traumatised by...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: The Chancellor spoke for more than an hour last Wednesday, but he did not mention several of the most pressing issues for my constituents. Particularly notable was the lack of any mention of additional money for social care, despite the Government’s saying in the general election that they would fix social care. The Care Quality Commission has said the system is at “tipping point”, yet...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I apologise, but I am short of time and lots of people want to speak. The theme of this debate is the UK and the world, which is apt, because the Chancellor was unable to hide how badly the British economy is doing, especially compared with the economies of our global competitors. The most recent OECD forecasts have UK GDP growth as the third lowest out of the 35 member nations. Our...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Does my right hon. Friend agree that what the Government and the Conservative party do not recognise is that the commitment is to 0.7% of GDP, so when GDP falls, as we learned it did in the Budget, the amount of money going to international aid also falls? The Chancellor should have made that clear last week. [Interruption]

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope the Minister appreciates that the problems at the SLC go beyond the actions, or lack of them, of the previous chief executive. The Jenkins report pointed to “bad behaviour” among the whole of the executive leadership team. Will the Minister tell us what that bad behaviour is, how long he has known about it and what action is being taken to stop it?

Roberta Blackman-Woods: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to recent reports of sub-standard teaching and unsanitary learning facilities and the decision in the High Court in Kampala in August 2016 to order the closure of 63 Bridge International Academies in Uganda, whether her Department has taken steps to change Government funding patterns to that organisation.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment her Department has made of the potential effect on its strategy on trade and aid of the establishment of the Institute for Free Trade; and if she will make a statement.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of growing drug resistance upon the globally-agreed target of reducing malaria cases and deaths by 40 per cent by 2020.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Once again, we see Labour pushing the Government into a more sensible and reasonable course of action, and we await the details of the proposals next week. It is about time, too. The Minister said nothing to enlighten us about why the Government prevaricated over this decision for so long. Their consultation exercise ended in February this year, and we have waited for six months since the...

Roberta Blackman-Woods: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answers of 18 September 2017 to Questions 10212 and 10213 on Erasmus+, whether the Government will underwrite successful bids submitted for Erasmus+ for those students with a mandatory year abroad in 2019-20, including the bids that are signed after the UK leaves the EU.

Date range

to

You can give a start date, an end date,
or both to restrict results to a particular date range. A missing end
date implies the current date, and a missing start date implies the oldest date
we have in the system. Dates can be entered in any format you wish, e.g.
3rd March 2007 or 17/10/1989

Person

Enter a name here to restrict results to contributions only by that person.

Section

Restrict results to a particular parliament or assembly that we cover (e.g. the Scottish Parliament), or a particular type of data within an institution, such as Commons Written Answers.

Column

If you know the actual Hansard column number of
the information you are interested in (perhaps you’re looking up a paper
reference), you can restrict results to that; you can also use
column:123 in the main search box.

TheyWorkForYou

Making it easy to keep an eye on the UK’s parliaments. Discover who represents you, how they’ve voted and what they’ve said in debates – simply and clearly.

Get insights on TheyWorkForYou and other mySociety sites, in our popular newsletter